Covenant
by AnteNomad
Summary: AU. Serah is missing, and Pulse l'Cie have been sighted on Cocoon. As Lightning strives to hunt down the invaders responsible, she must decide how much she's willing to give up to get her family back.
1. The Thirteenth Day

**COVENANT**

_**- Final Fantasy XIII -**_

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><p><strong>NOTICE:<strong> _Final Fantasy XIII and all related characters, locations, and crazy-sounding words are not the property of the writer, who makes no revenue is from the use of said material or this story in general. The ideas expressed within have no bearing on those of the actual copyright holders, who probably don't know this author exists. Duplication of this work without the knowledge or consent of the author would be seriously uncool. This text applies whether you read it or not. All your base are belong to us._

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><p><strong><span>PHASE 1<span>_  
><em>**

**_- Divergence -_**

_The thirteenth day was when everything changed._

_At first, I thought we were going to be fine. Things looked a bit rough, but I told myself we'd come through worse. If anything, I was surprised at how easy it all seemed._

_By the time I'd worked out how big a fool I was, and how much trouble we were in, things had already gone too far._

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><p>The trains met at the rim of the Hanging Edge, in the ruins of a broken city. It had been a proper station once, centuries ago, serving a metropolis whose name had retreated into the history texts. Now it was a mass of dusty arches, covered in dirt and debris from the artificial ceiling that loomed high above. On one side loomed the ruins, buildings suspended in air by trusses and ancient skyways, lights still glowing although no one called them home. On the other, far below, rippled the waters of Lake Bresha, reaching out to the edge of the world.<p>

The troops had formed ranks, helmeted eyes glowing in the shadow and laser sights crisscrossing the scene as they ushered the refugees into place. They lined up on tracks that led out over the lake and then just stopped, broken by the cataclysm that had ruined this place. Now a portal stood at the end of each track, waiting to complete their journey.

Serah filed out with the others, clad in the same prisoner's robes as the girl in front of her and the man behind. The headpiece weighed on her, the thick robes chafed against her arms, and the magnetized shackles held her wrists together at an unnatural angle. But she didn't mind. It was almost over now.

They formed two lines, with soldiers on either side of them holding guns at the ready. Then, all of a sudden, the crowd was awash in light. Serah looked up and saw a massive skytank hovering over them, floodlights blazing down. A second tank was off to her left, illuminating another rail track with refugees lined along it. Two more hovered off to her right, over more refugees, and others were descending into place. The scale of what was about to happen, and the sheer number of people caught up in it, struck her for the first time.

_"May I have your attention,"_ came a voice from the skytank's loudspeaker. It was a man who didn't need to bother introducing himself — the Primarch, whose worship-day addresses made his voice a weekly feature in every home, even if nobody could ever recall a word he said. "_On behalf of Cocoon's citizens, I would like to thank our brave Pulse pioneers, and express our best wishes for a successful relocation._ _Your noble and selfless sacrifice ensures the continued safety and peace of our society."_

A murmur ran through the refugees. "As if he gave us a choice," muttered the man behind Serah.

_"Were it not for this remarkable gesture,"_ the radio continued, _"every resident of Cocoon would be exposed to the dangers of the world below. By choosing to leave Cocoon, and participating in this migration, each one of you has done your part to ensure a safe and prosperous future. I am humbled by your sacrifice. You have the thanks of a grateful populace, and our sincere wish that you will find fortune in your new home."_

Another floodlight snapped on, illuminating the portal at the end of the line. The structure, three modular antennae arranged in a triangular pattern, began slowly to rotate, rising into the air.

"Start walking!" commanded a soldier from the side of the tracks, motioning unnecessarily with his rifle. "Steady! No sudden moves!"

Serah obeyed, almost stepping into the refugee in front of her who wasn't quite as eager. She knew she ought to be terrified at the thought of what waited on the other side of the portal, but in a way she felt almost excited at the possibility.

She glanced at the girl beside her, caught a shock of red hair underneath the hood. "Hey," she said, smiling and trying to mean it. "Are you scared?"

The other girl smiled back, and Serah caught something in her eye. "It'll be all right," she said. "Like the man said: New home!"

It was a long walk; the soldiers didn't seem to want to get near the portal themselves, and were making them cross more than a quarter mile of increasingly rickety track. Serah could feel the structure swaying slightly under her feet, and could only be thankful that there didn't seem to be much wind. Unbidden, another thought came to her — the Hanging Edge felt almost like a tomb, with the refugees on their way to be buried.

A rumbling sound above her made Serah look up, in time to see a jagged set of lines appear in the ceiling. The lines widened, light pouring through, to reveal a layer cake of structures built above the massive trap doors. Descending through them was a towering object that it took her a moment to recognize.

She'd grown up with the Pulse Vestige dominating the beach outside her town, but seeing it floating across the scenery, suspended from a Sanctum airship, was something else entirely. Indigo lights played over its surface, and purple beams shot out in random directions, the colors combining with the airship's golden energy tethers to give the structure a kind of alien majesty, something between a giant sarcophagus and a shrine.

"Keep moving!" the soldier admonished. With another flash of light, the portal energized in front of them. The three segments separated, and a deep purple vortex appeared between them. The refugees at the front of the line hesitated before it, as the light rippled over them.

"Proceed into the portal," commanded a voice from the skytank, echoing off the ruins behind them. "Do not cause any delay. Move—"

Then the skytank exploded.

Serah fell to her knees, raising her arms as a wave of heat washed over her from the blast. When she looked up, she saw that the tank hadn't completely exploded, but one of its engines was burning and the vehicle was falling down toward the lake. The others were pulling up and away, their floodlights now darting frantically across the landscape.

A trio of velocycles screamed through the air, and a rain of gunfire struck between the line of soldiers and the refugees. Both groups erupted in their own chorus of exclamations, the refugees starting in confusion and then cowering onto the pavement, the soldiers casting about before aiming their guns after the attackers. Red laser beams crisscrossed the air, and soon they were surrounded by gunfire.

"Run!" someone shouted, and then the line of refugees had reversed itself, lurching back towards the train. Serah didn't follow them so much as she was pushed along, lest she be caught and trampled underfoot.

"Maintain position!" demanded one of the soldiers from somewhere behind them. "Proceed through the portal or you will be—" A huge blast landed somewhere behind Serah, and the whole track swayed. The refugees uniformly ignored the command.

The soldiers back at the ruined station had scattered, abandoning the platform by the train in search of better cover. As the refugees gathered there, one of the velocycles swooped in to join them. One passenger had hopped off before it even stopped moving, a huge man clad in a grey trenchcoat with a black bandanna mostly securing his wild blond hair.

She should have known.

"Everyone all right?" he called. "Don't worry, no one's going to Pulse today!"

"Snow!" Serah called, pushing her way through the crowd towards him.

"Hey!" As soon as he saw her, Snow barreled through the other refugees and practically smothered her in a giant hug. "What did I tell you, huh? Nobody purges _my_ fiancée without a fight!"

"Found one!" Serah recognized the voice of Snow's friend Lebreau, but couldn't see a thing between her hood and Snow's chest. A second later, the shackles around her wrists gave way. Snow released her, too, allowing her to throw off the cloak, sighing as she felt the cool air and its weight off her shoulders. She saw Lebreau tossing aside a control device like the one she'd seen the train guards carrying, and shouted a thanks, but the other girl was already running off.

The fighting had only gotten worse. Muzzle flashes from rifle fire were now coming from every structure within her view, including Lebreau and some of the other refugees who had picked up discarded soldiers' guns. More velocycles had swooped in to duel with the tanks, and Sanctum skyfighters were now screaming through the air. The portal at the end of the line had shut down.

"How did you do all this?" she asked, turning back to Snow.

"Made some new friends," he said, grinning. "PSICOM made a lot of enemies with this purge; now it's time to reap what they sowed!"

Serah stepped out toward the edge of the platform, trying to get a better look, and quickly realized why she shouldn't. A huge flash erupted off to her side, and the whole station shuddered. She jumped back, trying to steady herself, and saw a massive cannon extending from one of the skytanks, aimed at a section of the station that was now engulfed in flames and crumbling away. Then she heard a roar off to her other side, and saw a rocket spearing out from the launcher on Lebreau's shoulder. It caught the skytank right at the base of the cannon, and the vehicle slowly twisted away.

The whole thing looked surreal, she thought, and had to consciously remind herself not to get swept away gawking. She glanced around, trying to get her bearings this time: The soldiers nearest to them appeared to have been cornered on the dead-end rail line between the terminal and the now-inactive portal, where they were being harried by gunfire from velocycles and Serah's fellow refugees. The quicker skyfighters were attempting to chase away the cycles, but most of the tanks appeared to be pulling back, regrouping around the Pulse Vestige, which was gliding right past them as if nothing strange had happened.

Seeing the Vestige reminded Serah of something else she couldn't afford to forget. Noticing the air on her arm and realizing what it meant, she looked down and saw that the bandage she'd been using to cover her upper left arm had been lost somewhere in the commotion, and the black brand it had hidden was exposed for anyone to see. "Oh!" she exclaimed, quickly covering the mark with her hand; fortunately, the other refugees seemed too distracted to have noticed.

"Oh, yeah!" Snow was beside her in a second, producing a mass of red fabric from one of his trenchcoat's pockets. After a second, she recognized the red half-coat she'd been wearing when they met.

"Thanks," she said, slipping her arms into the sleeves. "Wow, you thought of everything, didn't you?"

"That's right!" Snow pumped his fist, flashing that grid of his. "Your hero saves the day!"

"Not yet, hero!" said Lebreau, running up to toss Snow a rifle. "In case you didn't notice, but the army's still out there. And they seem kinda pissed!"

At the end of the line, the portal had reversed itself, producing a new, bright blue vortex. As Serah watched, a huge creature jumped through, wielding a massive sword. The soldiers were beginning to advance back toward the station, and the plinking of gunshots ricocheting off the structure was becoming a much more common sound.

Serah had trouble recalling that she had been solemnly marching toward that portal in an orderly line, only a few minutes earlier. "Snow…" she began, but stopped herself. There wasn't really time for her doubts at the moment, not now that Snow and his friends had apparently started a full-scale rebellion.

"Don't worry," Show said, laying a hand on her shoulder. "We promised, right? We'll get through this together!"

Serah smiled, and tried to believe it.

"Hey," called Lebreau, nodding out beyond the station. "Now what are they doing?"

The troops along the railway line had stopped, and were retreating toward the portal, which seemed to have reversed itself again. The skyfighters appeared to have pulled back as well, flying circles around them high near the ceiling of the chasm.

Another velocycle skidded in to the platform depositing three more of Snow's friends. "Hey!" called Gadot, holding a rifle over his head. "Looks like we made 'em think twice!"

"Of course!" Snow replied, running forward to meet them. "After all, what's our motto?"

"The army's no match for NORA!" the others chorused. That hadn't been their motto the last time Serah had heard it, but she didn't pay it much heed. Her eyes were on the Pulse Vestige, now poised near the edge of Lake Bresha and the rim of the world.

"Something's wrong," she said.

As she watched, a mass of cables shot from the nearby buildings, spearing the structure; its surface disappeared in a cloud of dust. More and more drove themselves into the thing, too many for Serah to count. Then, the energy tethers that had been suspending the structure snapped off, and the airship started to rise away.

The others were watching, too. "That doesn't look good," said Snow.

It took Serah another moment to realize he probably didn't mean the Vestige. The skytanks were now moving away from it, too, advancing on the station. And their huge main cannons were all extended from their undersides, producing a menacing glow.

"We'd better get out of here!" Snow said, grabbing Serah's hand and starting down the platform. "Everybody get back!"

They couldn't get far before the first tank fired.

Serah didn't see the blast, or even exactly feel it; she saw her feet lifting off the ground, which was splitting apart under her, as dust erupted from the walls and blocks of debris shook loose from the ceiling, and felt Snow's hand getting ripped out of hers. She landed on her feet but couldn't stay on them, rolling and jamming her shoulder into a crack that hadn't been there a second earlier. The first sound that registered to her over the ringing of her ears were screams from the other refugees.

Looking back, she saw that the far edge of the station had simply vanished, as if a building-sized monster had taken a bite out of it. The train's mangled lead car was hanging off the edge, and the whole vehicle was slowly sliding over. The track was collapsing, too; the soldiers were sprinting toward the portal at the far end, but only a few made it; Serah watched the whole structure tip over and fall out of sight.

She barely had time to get back on her feet before the second blast hit. More dust and debris exploded inward from the side tunnels, and a deep groaning noise came from all around her. She felt herself standing up, and then realized she wasn't; the whole floor was tipping sideways as the station's supports collapsed. The floor shuddered, and then she was sliding toward the edge.

Snow shouted her name, and she saw him charging toward her. She reached out, and he caught her, but then he tripped and both of them were falling, two more pieces of debris that slid straight off the ruined lip of the platform and into thin air.

For a second, they just stared at each other. Snow's eyes had the same look of genuine horror that she'd seen on the day she'd first showed him her brand, when she'd tried to break up with him because she didn't want it to lead him to harm. What a spectacular failure _that_ plan had been.

Pain flared out from the mark on Serah's arm, as if someone were shooting a laser through it. She winced, and then caught a flash of light in the corner of her eye. She looked up to see a huge shock wave expanding from the Pulse Vestige, ripping off the cables that had been holding it in midair, casting aside the skytanks like leaves in a storm and knocking every structure within a mile into pieces that rained down towards the lake with them.

Serah barely even felt it.

Even though she and Snow had been falling for what felt like half a minute, the Vestige hit the water first, just at the edge of the lake. It was mesmerizing to watch; its daggerlike base drove into the lake's surface, sending a huge wave through the water, but it hit at an angle and the whole immense structure began to tip over. A new cloud of debris erupted from its midsection, and the whole thing looked about to snap on the edge of the world.

Just as they were about to reach the water, a second flash erupted from the Vestige, and blue light filled Serah's vision. She couldn't see, but heard a rending sound louder and deeper than anything she knew how to describe.

When her eyes adjusted, a long moment later, they still hadn't hit the water. Indeed, when she looked down, she saw they weren't even falling toward it anymore: The surface had stopped, bare meters away, roiling in a way she couldn't understand.

It took another second to realize that was because the water was falling too. Beyond the rim of the lake, she could see a cloudless, featureless sky that seemed to stretch on forever, an expanse of green that never curved up but simply stopped at some point incomprehensibly far away, and a huge circle of light so bright that she couldn't look directly at it.

Then she looked up, past the falling skytanks and fragments of buildings and countless people, toward the waterfall pouring down from the world's fresh wound, and saw Cocoon receding into the distance above them.


	2. Worst Birthday Ever

The commotion had started just after midnight, as the revelers were making their way home. There was no alert, just shouts in the distance and then a series of rapid pops, off in the direction of the old Pulse Vestige. Most of the civilians paid the noises little heed, probably taking them for more fireworks and shrugging it off when they couldn't see any starbursts in the sky.

But the festival had ended nearly half an hour earlier, and Lightning knew gunfire when she heard it.

Technically, Lightning been off-duty since midway through the fireworks festival. Lieutenant Amodar had taken over her shift, told her to take the rest of the night off. He'd also told her to keep her nose out of whatever was going on with the Vestige. _"Nothing good will come of it. Nothing but grief."_

But her house was off in that direction anyway.

The townsfolk she passed on the road got increasingly unsettled by the distant commotion. The sight of a Guardian Corps sergeant running by probably wasn't helping, so Lightning tried to keep herself to a reasonably casual-looking jog. She also noticed that the PSICOM troops appeared to have vanished, just as she was getting used to seeing them lurking on every corner. She took it as another clue about who was behind all the shooting, one she didn't really need.

She reached the bend in the road that led down to her house, and the other beachside residences, but didn't follow it. The path leading off toward the Vestige was narrower and more dimly lit, cutting through the woods on the outskirts of town, so Lightning slowed her pace a bit. There was still no sign of PSICOM, and as she neared the far side of the trees, a high-pitched wail rose in the distance and the gunfire stopped as well.

The Vestige stood on an island across a shallow bay, connected to the city by a long footbridge. Given what the Lieutenant had told her, about PSICOM nosing around in the ruins, she'd expected soldiers to have the whole bridge barricaded. She could demand some answers, they'd tell her to move along, and based on how rude they were she could gauge how serious the situation was.

Only the creatures on the bridge weren't PSICOM. Their shapes were just human enough that they couldn't be monsters, but they couldn't be mistaken for people: Their proportions were all wrong, their forms encrusted with masses of black crystal, and they moved with the jerking gait of marionettes. On each of their chests was a perfect black circle with an eerie red glow in the center, pulsing like a sort of heartbeat.

Lightning stopped in her tracks at the edge of the treeline, catching her breath in surprise. The nearest of the things was just at the edge of the bridge, not five meters away — and it looked even closer, standing two or three heads taller than she did.

It was around then that Lightning remembered she didn't have her gunblade. Her assignment had been guard duty in the middle of Bodhum, watching to make sure nobody's ex-boyfriend got out of line and no kids strayed too close to the fireworks, so her gear amounted to a tiny AMP pistol and her grav-con unit. She drew the former, hoping the things would go down easy.

As it happened, the creature shambled right by, passing within arm's reach without giving any sign of seeing her. Lightning stayed stalk-still for another minute, as three more of the things lurched past her, trying to make sense of what she was seeing.

Letting them get a respectable distance away, she pulled out her earpiece, keying in the secure channel for her regiment's headquarters. "Base, this is Farron. Security breach in the Vestige District. Witnessed multiple monsters in Shoreside, heading inland."

_"Copy, Sergeant,"_ replied the voice of one of the base's dispatch officers. _"We've got reports of fighting in that area, but PSICOM's got a standing directive to stay clear."_

"Well, I don't see PSICOM — just monsters," Lightning replied. "Get a team out here before one of them threatens the town. And bring the big guns."

_"Understood."_

"Out." Lightning switched off her radio and tried to decide whether to track the creatures or head back to her house, get her gunblade and then try to catch up. But then she spotted a piece of pale fabric had caught on the underbrush, near the edge of the clearing. Although she couldn't see it too clearly in the pale light from the bridge lamps, she had a bad feeling in her gut even before she picked it up.

The garment was a thin pink sweeper, just like the one Serah always wore. Only this one had been ripped nearly to shreds.

Dropping it, Lightning pulled out her flashlight. There was no blood, either on the clothes or the ground, but the area was scattered with shell casings from military-issue machine guns. Lightning looked back at the bridge leading out toward the Vestige, and this time noticed the bullet holes and blasted earth from a thermal grenade near the edge of the walkway.

Then she heard the wailing noise again, off in the direction those inhuman creatures had gone.

Whatever was going on, those things were involved, and Serah along with them, so chasing the sound wasn't just an option anymore. Pistol in hand, Lightning headed back into the wood.

The four shamblers that had passed her earlier were making better time than she would have guessed, crashing through the woods as though they couldn't see the trees until they were bouncing off of one. Still, they were following a decent approximation of a straight line, and Lightning guessed they had to know where they were going somehow. She passed them by, striking ahead toward the inland ridge that she could only guess was their destination.

This area should be deserted after dark; there was a hiking trail that ran along the Shoreside Peaks, but it wasn't lit and most campers would have chosen a site with a better view of the fireworks. But the farther Lightning went, the more sure she was that she could hear _something_ up ahead — heavy footsteps, not unlike those of the shamblers she'd left behind, and a strange lowing sound that sounded halfway between mechanical and alive.

Shortly after she hit the trail, she saw the first PSICOM troops — three of them, lying amid a circle of pulverized trees, their bodies not looking much better. Lightning checked them for pulses more out of procedure than any expectation of survivors inside the smashed combat suits, and she wasn't surprised. There was a plain trail of destruction now, and it led her uphill.

After several more dead PSICOM soldiers and a few fallen shamblers, the path led her out above the treeline, to a series of hanging bridges that linked the series of ever more impressive lookout sites built onto the peaks. The noises were so close now that Lightning had to be nearly on top of their source, though she was beginning to realize that the sounds were carrying an unnatural distance as well.

The first lookout site looked like a stampede had passed through it, but she didn't see any signs of fighting. But she _did_ see one of the shamblers trying to make its way across the bridge to the second peak. And she saw a girl's figure, pale hair illuminated by Eden's light, standing on the peak and looking trapped.

"Serah!" she called, charging forward onto the bridge.

"Lightning!" Her sister gasped out the word; her voice carried equal parts exhaustion and terror.

"Hold on!" she shouted back, trying not to sound worried herself.

The shambler was about halfway across the bridge, and hadn't reacted to her at all. Lightning did her best to close the distance, but its footsteps made the bridge all but impossible to navigate, so she got as close as she could, snapped her fingers, and leapt forward as soon as she felt the grav-con field take hold. Forward became down, and she had just enough time to orient her boots before they slammed into the ghoul's midsection. The impact nearly knocked it over, but one of its clawlike hands caught the bridge's suspension chain — dumb luck, she thought, and it started floundering around to face its new attacker. While was trying to right itself, Lightning leveled her pistol at the thing, firing two shots before her feet even landed on the bridge. The shambler flailed some more, but tipped over the side of the bridge and fell.

Which would have been great, if it hadn't flipped the bridge half-over as it went. Lightning reached out for the chain, the shambler lashed out at her, and neither of them quite hit their mark.

Since she'd just drained the charge on her grav-con unit, it was a pretty hard fall. She landed hard on her side and rolled off another drop, coming to rest in a mess of roots and feeling thankful that she hadn't felt anything break. She'd held on to her pistol, too.

She could see Serah above her, leaning over the peak's rim. Watching her sister take a fall like that couldn't have done her night any favors, and Lightning resolved to make the fight look easier from here on out.

The shambler seemed to have landed even harder than she had, crashing onto a boulder that jutted out from the ridge. Its right side seemed to have a new dent in it, and one of its legs had gained an extra joint — but none of that stopped it from getting up, and immediately starting back up the ridge.

"Hey!" Lightning shouted, bringing up her pistol and shooting the thing again. It was set for a heavy stun blast, one shot of which would have thrown a grown man off his feet and left him unconscious the rest of the night. The creature just shuddered a bit and stumbled in its tracks. But she did get its attention, as it turned around to face her.

Adjusting the pistol to its maximum setting, she closed the distance with the fastest sprint she could manage across the rough uphill terrain and delivered three quick kinetic shots straight into the creature's neck, then snapped her grav-con field back on and used every bit of the small charge it had regenerated to drive the fist of her free hand right into its face. The thing's head snapped backward, black fluid started to ooze out of a break in the crystals encrusting its neck, and it fell twitching to the ground and didn't get up.

She looked up, trying to work out the best way to the peak —

"Look out!"

— and saw Serah pointing at something behind her. Lightning spun around and spotted two more shamblers crashing through the trees, heading straight at her. She fired two quick shots, catching one of them in the head and one in that glowing orb on its chest. That seemed to slow them down, at least, so she turned and made a run for the peak. But for the inelegance of their motion, the things' overgrown limbs were well-suited for climbing, and the shamblers seemed to be making better time than she was, especially as she got back above the treeline and the number of footholds dropped significantly.

"Serah—" she called, glancing up toward the ridge. She'd meant to tell her sister to run, that she'd catch up on the other side of the ridge, but Serah wasn't looking at her anymore. Lightning could see two more of the shamblers silhouetted against the sky, lurching up onto the peak and flanking her sister. The red glow from their chests cast Serah in a hellish light.

Catching her breath, Lightning leveled her pistol and fired. She aimed low and wide to avoid hitting Serah, and she was too far away to have much hope of striking the creatures anyway. It was an act of desperation, and she was stunned when it actually worked: Both shamblers turned to face her and started back down the ridge. Lightning wasn't crazy about the four-to-one odds, but she preferred them to two against Serah.

Suddenly, another woman was on the peak with Serah, grabbing her arm. Lightning only saw her for a second, a shadow against the sky, but she caught wild dark hair, some kind of flowing sash, and a double-bladed spear. Serah yelped, and then both of them vanished behind the ridge.

"Serah!" Lightning yelled, but she barely got the word out before something sharp hit her from behind. She fell face-first onto the slope, rolled over and fired at the shambler standing over her. It caught one shot in its shoulder, another on its hand, a third in its chest, and then Lightning was scrambling to her feet, trying to sprint towards the peak. But the second shambler caught her in the leg; its hand felt like sandpaper and its fingertips sliced straight through her skin. She kicked, knocking it off balance, shooting the first one in the head once more to make sure it stayed down and then unloaded on its partner. It got one more swipe in at her shoulder, landing right on the pauldron and leaving a nasty scratch across her Sergeant's bars, before she worked out that the pulsing orb in its chest was a weak spot and sent it crashing down the slope as well. With a quick glance at her leg, which was bleeding more than she would have liked, she gritted her teeth and charged up toward the peak.

The last two shamblers were kicking up a small avalanche on their way down to her. Lightning dodged a couple particularly large rocks, but put too much weight on her injured leg and faltered. Before she could snap on her grav-con unit, which had built up nearly a quarter charge by now, the ghouls were on her, one slashing across her side and the other opting opting for the full-on body slam. Lightning ducked, and most of the creature's weight flipped right over her, but it still knocked her to her knees.

And once the things were on top of her, it was impossible to find her footing. Their limbs were everywhere she tried to find purchase, razor fingers cutting at her arms and testing the slash resistance of her uniform. She fired back, but the damn things' lurching made it impossible to aim.

Finally, she caught one of their legs with a well-placed kick, and gained herself half a second's freedom. Rolling over onto her knees, she snapped on her grav-con unit and jumped, shooting five meters straight into the air. Picking one of the shamblers, she delivered three shots into its head and chest. Then, just as she felt her unit's charge running out, she reversed the gravity field and sent herself crashing down onto the second one, driving her feet into its chest with a satisfying crunch. The first one looked to be recovering, so she shot it once more, right in the orb, and then bashed it on the head for good measure. Then she left their bodies behind and started back uphill.

The observation deck was empty, with no sign of a struggle and no trace of Serah. There was nobody on the bridge, or on the peaks in either direction, and she saw no one on the far side of the ridge. She called Serah's name, but the only thing she heard back were the thumping footsteps of more shamblers.

A moment later, three of them emerged from the treeline, lurching up toward her. "I don't have time for this," she hissed, leveling her pistol once more.

Just as she was about to charge down at the things, she heard another, much more welcome noise. Looking back towards the city, she saw two of her garrison's velocycles swooping in, raking the creatures with gunfire. The damn things went down almost too easily, after what they'd put her through.

Lightning raised her hand, but one was already circling in to a hover landing on the observation deck. "Sergeant!" called the pilot, a tall blond-haired man with corporal's bars; his parade uniform said that he hadn't planned to be on patrol today.

"Dacks!" She stopped herself from asking what took him so long. "Did you see anyone else in the area on your way in?"

He shook his head. "Just a few more of those monsters you called in. What _are_ those things, anyway?"

Lightning had completely lost track of that question, and she shook it out of her head now. "There's no time. We need to sweep these woods, right away!"

"Don't worry, Sergeant, we're taking care of it." Dacks glanced at her arms and leg, which Lightning had forgotten were still bleeding. "Maybe you should—"

"No, listen to me!" She grabbed his arm, leaving a bloody handprint on his uniform sleeve. "It's my sister. Someone took her."

She didn't leave the woods until they'd swept the entire district. A thermal sweep established pretty quickly that there were no humans left in the wood, after which they'd checked on foot for bodies. They'd found quite a few — mostly PSICOM, a few unlucky campers — but none of them were Serah.

By the time Phoenix lit, she had run out of ways to keep busy in the field and returned to the guard station. She'd gotten around to treating her wounds, though she still had blood on her uniform and a few leaves in her hair. Her pistol, which she couldn't seem to keep holstered, was tapping nervously against the side of her leg.

Lieutenant Amodar found her lurking in the dispatch center, listening in on the patrols. "You've got a hell of a way of taking the day off, Farron," he said, jabbing at her shoulder.

Lightning hadn't thought about that in a while, either. "Can't exactly relax right now, sir."

"Quite a night, wasn't it?" He let out a heavy breath. "Don't worry, Farron; everybody here is going to do their best to get her back — whether you're looking over their shoulders or not. But you should be prepared, in case this doesn't get solved in the next couple hours."

She looked at him, and registered for the first time that he probably hadn't slept either. The man's typical warm smile didn't quite extend to his eyes, which had faint rings under them, and he hunched forward just enough to put shadows across his whole face. "You know something, Lieutenant?" she asked, frowning.

Amodar nodded, folding his arms. "That description you gave us, of the woman you saw? Turns out, PSICOM's had an alert out for someone matching it, something to do with that business at Euride." He hesitated. "They're saying she's a Pulse l'Cie."

Lightning felt as if a ghost had passed through her. "L'Cie," she repeated. This whole thing was feeling more and more like a bad dream. Or a really elaborate joke. "What would a Pulse l'Cie want with Serah?"

"Tell you what: When we catch her, we'll ask." Amodar shrugged, drawing himself up. "Point is, we're on top of it. Say what you want about those PSICOM fellas, but they're thorough. If they're on the case, they'll find this girl. And just in case they don't find her quick enough, we're on the case too." He plucked Lightning's pistol out of her hand, and she flinched at how bad her reflexes had become. "Go home, Farron. You've done what you could, and you're no good to your sister if you can't even stand up straight. I promise, you'll know as soon as we find anything."

With a meaningful look, he offered the weapon back to her. Sighing, Lightning took it and snapped it back into her holster. "Sir."

It was full dawn by the time she stumbled back to the house. She half-hoped to find Serah there, that she'd managed to get away on her own and would be halfway through the breakfast they prepared every year.

She wasn't. The house was just as deserted as Lightning had left it. Lately she'd been getting annoyed at finding an empty house, as that meant Serah was probably off somewhere hanging out with her wannabe-gangster boyfriend. Now, her mind drifted back to the day she and Serah had returned from the hospital, after learning their mother would never come home.

Laying on the dining table was a simple white box, half-tied with a gold and violet ribbon. It had to be from Serah, and she seemed to have gotten halfway through wrapping it before abandoning the task.

Almost timidly, Lightning pulled the ribbon off and slid open the box. Inside, sitting on a sheet of gold wrapping paper, was a curved switchblade knife.

She picked up the weapon, flipped open the blade and stared at it for a long moment. Then she flipped it in her hand, testing the grip and its balance. After another moment, she closed it, snapping it onto her utility belt next to her pistol.

Then she went to get her gunblade.


	3. Blinded by Light

_"Sweep team to base. L'Cie spotted. Repeat, l'Cie spotted."_

Lightning almost couldn't believe it. They'd been sweeping Bodhum and the surrounding islands for a day and a half now, and she'd been fighting off a sinking feeling that the l'Cie was already outside their net. What's more, the PSICOM teams who'd swooped in on the area hadn't transmitted so much as a test signal on a frequency the Corps units could pick up. This call had come out on an open channel. Someone must have startled.

_"Pulse l'Cie, confirmed. Initiating containment protocol."_

Lightning was hanging on to the side seat of a Corps velocycle, as Dacks flew them over the reefs. They'd expanded the search out here in the morning, as it was theoretically possible for someone to wade all the way to the mainland while keeping their head above water — if they were surefooted enough, and had the right kind of superhuman stamina. According to the automap displayed across her windscreen, the PSICOM broadcast was coming from some finger of an island too small to have a name, about three kilometers away.

"Get us over there," she ordered.

Dacks complied, gunning the cycle up to its top speed. Lightning tightened her grip on the handlebar above the vehicle's door and leaned against the windscreen as the passing air tore at her arm and leg. She could make out the double contrails of skyfighters circling the island, and the fainter trails of other velocycles, but PSICOM seemed to have called all the skytanks back when they'd decided to uproot the Pulse Vestige and evacuate Bodhum's population. The logic of that had become more apparent this morning, when they started calling it a Purge.

Lightning shook her head. She'd been doing a decent job of keeping that out of her head, and there wasn't anything she could do about it now.

The island wasn't more than half a kilometer long, a rocky ridge that stuck up out of a sandbar (or a sandbar that had gathered around a ridge; Lightning wasn't a geologist), and they came up on it fast. The PSICOM units were circling around a point near the peak of the ridge, shortly before a sheer cliff that dropped back into the sea.

Lightning hardly needed the cycle's scope to spot the l'Cie, as her clothes were the only color on the whole rock. It was a woman, whose clothes consisted mainly of some kind of bright blue sash. Under that was a lot of black, though from a distance Lightning couldn't quite tell the clothes from the tattoos. But she recognized the wild hair and the curve-bladed staff, and the figure made a plausible enough candidate for a demon warrior from Pulse.

She was also clearly alone. Lightning could see the whole island as Dacks swooped in, and there was no sign of Serah anywhere.

By the time they arrived overhead, it was clear the PSICOM units were committed to keeping their distance, staying a couple hundred meters in the air and circling the l'Cie like carrion monsters, as if she'd just fall down and give up on her own. "This their 'containment protocol?'" she asked, shaking her head.

Dacks shrugged. "Can't really blame them. Who wants to be the first guy to take on a l'Cie?"

Lightning peered down at the woman. She'd stopped, the staff was in her hands, and she was shouting. She didn't have a chance to hear the words over the distance and the velocycle's engine, but it looked a lot like a challenge, like the woman was daring them to make the next move.

Her free hand closed around her gunblade. "Let me down."

He blinked. "Sergeant?"

"Do it."

Dacks hesitated. "You sure we shouldn't let PSICOM take this? If that's really a Pulse l'Cie—"

She flashed a glare that shut him up. "Just cover me."

Without another word, Dacks swung the velocycle around and came swooping in on the island along the length of the ridge. At about two hundred meters, Lightning pushed off into midair, drawing her gunblade as soon as she'd cleared the vehicle. Dacks had made a good run; she was set to come down practically on top of the l'Cie. Which was good, as she was falling quite a bit faster than terminal velocity and had only a few seconds to maneuver.

Pulling out a gravity bomb from her pack, she armed the device and threw it ahead of her after she'd confirmed her contact site. The l'Cie didn't seem to notice, or didn't know what the device was, as she stood her ground as Lightning made her way down.

The bomb hit the ground with a flash that left a bubble of distorted physics, sending sand and loose rocks swirling into the air and draining all of Lightning's momentum just before she hit the ground. She came down standing, weapon at the ready — and it was a good thing, because her target didn't seem affected at all. She was standing not two meters away, well within the gravity bubble, staff driven into the ground in some sort of defensive pose, and Lightning caught a faint shimmer of energy glowing around her.

Around then, she finally began to process what it might mean to fight a l'Cie. But there wasn't much time to dwell on it, so she took a quick read of the woman's stance and then charged.

The target was slow to respond, so apparently her power took a lot of concentration. Lightning's blade caught her across the forearm, but glanced off leaving only a razor-thin trace of blood. She reversed and cut her across the leg, with with no better results. Then she saw the l'Cie's stance change and propelled herself backwards just as the lance leapt up to miss her own arm by a hairbreadth.

Both of them fell back into a guarded stance, out of range. Lightning heard an engine whir behind her, and caught sight of Dacks' velocycle in her peripheral vision, coming to a hover over her shoulder.

"Where is she?" she demanded, not expecting an answer so much as time to get a better read on her opponent.

The woman scoffed. "Oh, is this the part where I tell you everything?" She had an aggressive posture; the lance was balanced in one hand, despite being even taller than she was, and she crouched as if ready to leap in any direction on a half-second's notice. Lightning didn't recognize the fighting style, but the woman looked like a natural for it. "Don't think so."

"You're surrounded," Lightning returned. "Start talking, or die right here." Killing her wasn't really an option just yet, but she was betting she wouldn't have to. To make it this far from Bodhum, the woman must have been running all but nonstop since the festival night, and Lightning could tell she wasn't at her peak. Lightning was betting she could wear her down.

"Yeah?" The woman's raised her lance, aiming straight at Lightning's face. "I've got another idea."

She lunged, and Lightning dodged, catching the lance with her gunblade and twisting to jab an elbow at the target's midsection, but the attack had more force than she'd anticipated and she staggered off balance. Her target took advantage, swinging the lance around and forcing Lightning to jump backward, then she drove the thing into the ground and vaulted herself forward, boots connecting with Lightning's center of mass. She wasn't quite sure how she managed to stop her falling over, but before her feet could regain purchase the lance was slicing toward her again, opening a gash across her tunic. Lightning didn't have time to check whether it had broken the skin, but it certainly stung enough.

The target clearly had Lightning beaten for strength as well as toughness, which left her with a pretty short list of advantages. Worse, she was getting driven towards the edge of the ridge, and fast losing her room to maneuver. She'd needed to turn the tide, fast.

She barely deflected the next jab from the target's lance, then made a half-spin to aim the gunblade back at her legs, but halfway through the move the lance split into three pieces and the bladed ends dove straight in at her. One caught on her tunic just below the neck, while the other bit into her arm before she could twist away. Then the target landed a kick on her midsection, propelling them apart long enough for the second it took her to reassemble the lance, and dove back in with a swing that nearly cut Lightning's feet out from under her. Her gunblade stopped the attack, but she couldn't riposte as the blocking took all the energy she had. The l'Cie, on the other hand, reversed the lance and took another stab, spearing into her just below the hip.

That hurt, but it gave Lightning the opening she needed to retaliate. Turning while the lance was still caught in her uniform, she drove her elbow into the target's chest, then bashed her with the hilt of her gunblade. Then, launching herself backward while the target was off-balance, she retracted the blade and shot her right in the shoulder. A half-second later, while Lightning pulled out a potion for the wound on her leg, Dacks fired a blast from the velocycle's beam gun, burning a trench through the ground under the target's feet and showering her with shrapnel from the superheated rock.

All their efforts were rewarded with a grunt from the l'Cie, whose expression looked annoyed for the first time. Lightning was becoming a lot less worried about killing her by accident.

The target's next charge came with a lot more force. Lightning parried, ducking under the lance, but the other end of it spun around and caught her anyway, right across the belt. This one stung a lot more, so she must have got skin, and Lightning barely had time to react as the lance split apart again. She caught the target's arm, used the leverage to swing herself away and made a swing with the gunblade mainly designed to buy her time before she finally managed to take up a proper defensive stance.

As soon as Lightning disengaged, Dacks fired a burst from the velocycle's machinegun. This time, the target dodged most of the bullets, twisted her foot and launched herself straight at the vehicle. Dacks flinched away, but the l'Cie got a hold on the vehicle's front fender, then jabbed her lance right into the forward gravity wheel. There was a flash and a painful screeching noise, and the l'Cie jumped back as the velocycle spun out of control, smoke pouring from the engine.

"Figures," she said, turning back to Lightning with an expression halfway between a grin and a sneer. "Even your machines are pathetic."

"Save it." Lightning charged again, but three strikes in a row got deflected by the target's lance before she could even get within range; the third time, she ended up with a cut across her knee. The target had nearly double Lightning's reach with that damn thing, and she got the feeling the l'Cie was playing with her. She was definitely driving Lightning dangerously close to the edge, so with a frustrated grunt she snapped on her grav-con unit and jumped, taking an arc that carried her well over the target's head. At around the midpoint she fired straight down, catching the surprised l'Cie dead center, then took a swing just as she landed that cut into the target's leg.

That really should have slowed her down more than it did. Lightning had enough time to slap a potion on her knee after a pretty unplesant landing, but then the target was on her again, with a stab at Lightning's chest that she barely managed to deflect, a swing that caught her arm, and then a kick to Lightning's stomach that nearly sent her sprawling. She managed to roll at the last second and come back to her feet just in time to see the target making a running leap at her. She twisted, and managed to avoid most of the blow, but the lance still cut into her side between two ribs. That hurt — the blades weren't just sharp, they felt like sandpaper going in — but if her tunic hadn't stopped them, it did seem to have distorted the l'Cie's follow-through, so Lightning had an opportunity. Even while she cried out as pain flared from her broken nerves, she grabbed the lance, turned to throw the l'Cie off balance, then drove her knee into the target's stomach. Then, her free hand pulled out the knife Serah had given her, flipped it open and swung. It cut a gash up the target's arm, right below the scorched white brand on her shoulder, but the woman had recovered quickly and it didn't cut deep.

Still, it was enough to make her back off, retreating to a defensive posture. "You _really_ don't know when to quit," she growled, and Lightning noticed she was breathing heavier now.

"You're surrounded, remember?" Lightning smashed another potion against the cut in her side, and managed to stop most of the bleeding. That was three in barely a minute, was starting to feel the tingling that warned half her body was about to go numb if she kept using the things, but she was nearly out of them anyway. "Only one way this ends."

"Heard that before." And the l'Cie charged again. All the signs told Lightning she was wearing the woman down — her posture was slacking, her breathing was harder, her voice had gotten tighter — but she still came on with the force of a training drone and Lightning barely deflected the lance away from her neck. A knee caught her on the wound in her side, the staff of the lance slammed into her collarbone and the l'Cie delivered a kick that took her straight off her feet. She lost her grip on her gunblade, and for the second she hovered in midair, she saw the lance spinning around, the l'Cie ready to deliver a finishing blow.

She also saw Dacks' velocycle rising behind her, shuddering back into position. Snapping on her grav-con unit, she drove her fist against her remaining gravity bomb just as she hit the ground. Another gravity bubble exploded around her, and the energy field shot her a good twenty meters up. The blast caught the target off guard this time, and she was left flailing in midair. Dacks took advantage, and blasted her right in the side with the cycle's beam cannon.

Lightning switched off the grav-con unit, landing in time to catch the end of the gravity bubble and retrieving her gunblade from midair. The target, while singed, recovered just as quickly, and made her feeblest charge yet. Lightning parried her thrust with only a moderate effort, then swung her gunblade down in a sweep that nearly caught her leg. The l'Cie deflected the blow, then the lance split apart and Lightning could only parry at one end; the other cut across her cheek. She drove up with the gunblade's hilt, caught the target on her jaw and tried to get some distance and give Dacks another clear shot, but the target must have figured out the plan as well and stayed with her. Pulling out Serah's knife again, Lightning stabbed at her shoulder, then caught the riposte with her arm, taking another bad gash as she twisted away, converting her gunblade and getting just enough room to jam it against the exposed skin above the target's hip and pull the trigger. This time, the shot tore right through her.

The l'Cie made a cry that was equal parts pained and angry, and took a wild swing with the lance that twisted Serah's knife out of Lightning's hand and caught her just below the collarbone. Her tunic took most of the force, and Lightning grabbed her arm, twisting at the wrist and kneeing her hard. She was actually surprised when the move succeeded in breaking the target's grip on the lance, and one loose end clattered down to the rock. Before the l'Cie could recover, Lightning planted her foot on the tip, leaned in, made a fist and punched her hard in the side of her head.

The exertion was enough put spots in front of her eyes; she stumbled, and or the first time she worried about how much blood she'd lost. But she'd managed to knock the target to her knees, and broken her hold on her lance. Fighting through her own daze, Lightning kicked the lance away and aimed her gunblade at her throat. "I want answers!" she said, picking up Serah's knife without once breaking the l'Cie's gaze or lowering her blade.

The woman glared up at her, with eyes that knew she'd lost but didn't want to admit it. "You're wasting your time," she said, practically coughing out the last word. "You want to wipe out the big, bad l'Cie? Sorry, I'm all you get."

Lightning narrowed her eyes. "What are you talking about? Where's my sister?"

The woman didn't seem to be listening anymore. She coughed, clutching the knife wound on her arm, and she couldn't seem to keep her head up. "You're not gonna get a thing from me," she hissed, this time to Lightning's boots. "So do us both a favor, and just _finish it!_"

Around then, Lightning noticed that the target's shoulder was glowing. And she wasn't actually clutching her knife wound, but the white brand just above it that was now shining with blue-white light. A second later, the ground around her was glowing too.

Lightning took a step back. The ground was shaking, with a rumble that seemed to reverberate right through Cocoon's shell, and the whole sea was rippling with waves larger than she had ever seen. Then a column of light, brighter than Phoenix, speared up from the l'Cie, who made the first cry of pure pain Lightning had heard from her.

A second after her eyes adjusted, Lightning looked up, and caught sight of a large, dark object diving straight at them.

She got halfway into a defensive stance, but it didn't help. Something cold and hard struck her right in the chest, lifting her off her feet and sending her flying. She shook herself out of the daze just in time to snap on her grav-con unit, stopping in midair an instant before she would have smashed against the rocks.

The creature was now hovering over her and the l'Cie, a massive mechanical monster with a silver head and huge orange claws. It was glaring down at the l'Cie, who had that annoyed expression again.

"What are _you_ doing here?" she demanded, picking up her lance. "I don't need you! I was doing just fine!"

Seeing the situation about to escape from her, Lightning brought up her gunblade and charged back towards the two as soon as her feet touched the ground, trying to ignore the stabbing pain that told her the thing had probably cracked a rib. Before she was halfway there, a blast of energy flared out from the creature's claws and crashed right into her. She was dimly aware of being knocked off her feet and tumbling down the ridge, but her awareness had given out before she hit the bottom.


	4. Terra Incognita

**PHASE 2**

_**- Transference -**_

* * *

><p><em>When I was fighting, it was easier to put things out of mind. How much I didn't know, how much I'd forgot, how little time I had to figure it out.<em>

_Doesn't mean I liked it. The fights were just another distraction, something between me and the stuff that really mattered. And I should've known that couldn't last._

_But for a while, they were all I had._

* * *

><p>Serah woke up shouting Lightning's name. She'd had a dream, of watching her sister fight her way towards her along the Shoreside Peaks. Then one of those creatures had grabbed her from behind, razor fingers cutting into her brand, and she'd been pulled off the mountainside into oblivion. For a moment, the dream felt like a real memory of that night, as though she'd been falling ever since.<p>

When her eyes finally broke through to her drowsy mind, she saw she was surrounded by crystal. It was pale blue, sculpted like a frozen tsunami, and crystal dust hung in the air around her. Scattered around her lay bodies, in regular clothes and prisoners' robes and soldiers' combat gear, and some of whom were stirring.

Snow lay beside her, breathing but unconscious. Serah laid a hand on his, fingering the necklace he'd given her on the festival night. She held up the cracked orb that represented Cocoon, staring for a moment. Then she finally looked up at the matching sphere that loomed high above her in the impossible sky, and remembered how far she'd come.

Looking at the endless blueness above quickly made her dizzy, and seeing Cocoon up there just reminded her of that eternity of slow-building terror during her fall, with air and water and debris swirling around her while Pulse loomed ever closer below, so she turned her attention back to Snow. He stirred when she shook him, and groaned, but didn't seem quite conscious of anything. Serah tried to pull him up by his shoulders, but couldn't quite find the leverage.

A terrible thought came into her head. Snow's arms were bare up to the elbows, and there was no sign of a l'Cie brand on either, but the heavy sleeves of his coat covered his upper arms where the fal'Cie had branded Serah. She struggled to roll up his sleeves, and make sure he had come through the ordeal with his humanity intact, but —

"Serah!" Snow bolted upright with so much force that he nearly sent her flying when his head slammed into her shoulder. "Serah? Serah!" Realizing what he'd done, he threw out his hands to steady her, fumbling for a moment before he managed it. "You all right?"

"Yeah." She nodded, rubbing her shoulder with a sheepish grin. "Snow…are you okay?"

"I guess." Snow's eyes were starting to take in the scene around them. "What happened?"

Serah couldn't think of the words. They helped each other to their feet, as Snow took in their surroundings. Like Serah, his eyes took in everything else before ending on Cocoon in the sky. "…Is this for real?"

"We must've fell this whole way," said Serah. "I don't remember landing, but…"

"No way we could've survived," said Snow. "A fall from that high? I mean…" He shook his head, clasping his hands behind his neck as he started to pace. "You'd need some kind of miracle."

Serah's hand drifted up to her arm, where her l'Cie brand was hidden underneath the jacket Snow had given her. It didn't feel like anything special, not now, but she remembered the energy that had been burning through it just before the Pulse fal'Cie had torn itself free of Cocoon.

Suddenly, she wondered if the fal'Cie had known she was in danger, that it might lose its chosen l'Cie. Had it done all this to save her?

While Serah was busy dismissing this thought, a groan from behind them signaled that the others were beginning to stir, and they gave up on getting their bearings for the moment. Everyone looked dazed, but in good condition apart from a few cuts and bruises. Serah checked as inconspicuously as she could, and didn't see a brand on any of them.

"Everyone okay?" Snow was asking, as the crowd's dazed mutterings began to escalate towards alarm. "It's all right. Looks like we…made it."

Hearing his hesitation, Serah looked around and followed his gaze to a man who was lying face-down under a smashed piece of scaffolding. She couldn't tell anything about his condition, because he was covered head to toe in the armor of the Sanctum soldiers who had been directing the Purge. But he was moving.

"Are you okay?" she asked, reaching out as the man tried to worm his way out of the debris.

She didn't get the reaction she'd expected. As soon as he looked up, the soldier lurched away from her, scrabbling for his gun. "Stay back!" he shouted, coming half to his feet before nearly tripping over the debris he'd just escaped. The gun stayed pointed straight at her, though.

"Hey!" Snow shouted, as Serah backed away. In half a heartbeat he had imposed himself between her and the soldier, palms spread but in that stance he used when he was ready to jump into a fight. "Take it easy, all right?"

"Don't come any closer!" the soldier insisted. The gun left Serah, though, as he began to realize that he had refugees all around him. "None of you!"

"Nobody's gonna hurt you," Snow said, lowering his voice and drawing out his words a little in that tone that made Serah wonder if he was trying to be hypnotic. "Just put the gun down."

"You think I'd listen to you?" Judging by the soldier's voice, he couldn't be much older than Serah. "You've been tainted by Pulse!"

"Well, we're all Purged now." Snow nodded upwards, at the sky. "Take a look."

"Huh?" The soldier made a quick glance without letting his guard down, but caught sight of Cocoon and did a double take. "What—"

Snow jumped forward, knocking the gun out of his hand and sending the soldier flying with an uppercut that caught him in the jaw. The man landed about a meter away with a gargled exclamation. "That's for threatening my fiancée."

"Are we on Pulse?" That was a new voice, a big bearded man whom Serah vaguely recognized from the train. "They did it, didn't they? PSICOM finished the Purge!"

The other refugees, who'd apparently recovered enough to start panicking, followed his lead with a series of increasingly hysterical exclamations. It seemed like the crowd was getting ready to stampede, if they could figure out which direction to run in.

"End this disturbance immediately!" That was the muffled voice of another soldier, deeper than the kid Snow had knocked out and loud enough to interrupt the commotion. Serah spun around and saw that about a half-dozen of the troops had gathered together, half-hidden behind one of the crystal waves. "You are ordered to remain calm!"

For a second or two, the crowd stopped, probably more out of reflex than anything. Then they realized that the soldiers were hopelessly outnumbered, and quite a few of the Purgees still had guns.

"This is their fault!" exclaimed the bearded man, aiming a pistol at the soldiers. An angry chorus came from the crowd. "They sent us here! They've condemned us all to hell!"

"The Sanctum cannot tolerate Pulse corruption on Cocoon. Look at the damage your resistance has caused!" The soldier stepped forward as his troops formed a circle, guns aimed out at the crowd. His uniform was different from the others, Serah noted, but she wasn't familiar enough with the military to tell what that meant.

Lightning would know.

The thought of her sister, the image of her surrounded by those ghouls on the mountain slope, distracted Serah through most of the bearded man's indignant retort.

"Our orders were to eliminate the threat from Pulse," the soldier was saying. "We would have preferred to handle it peacefully."

"You mean you'd prefer if we didn't shoot back!"

"Let's all just take it slow here, okay?" Snow said, taking a step forward. "No reason to do anything crazy."

"We're on Pulse!" shouted another man. "We'll never survive down here! They've doomed us all!"

"No!" That was a third voice, as the crowd got ever more raucous. This one was a boy, barely a teenager by the sound of him, still wearing his prisoner's robes. "It was the Pulse fal'Cie that did it! It sent us to die down here!"

"That was PSICOM's plan, too!" The bearded man turned back to the soldiers. "Except they were just as happy to kill us all!"

"Just because you started a fight! Maybe those transgates would've taken us someplace better, where the fal'Cie would have looked after us!"

"There's no point arguing!" said Snow. "We're all in this together now, so let's focus on surviving!"

"Excuse me?" That was yet another voice, but it wasn't shouting. A familiar red-haired girl stepped into the no-man's land between the mob of Purgees and the soldiers, hands behind her back. Like most of the others, she'd shed her prisoner's robes, revealing an outfit that might almost pass for a beach getup save for the elaborate chain of beads wrapped around it, the fur-lined boots or the animal pelt around her waist. "I was just wondering…what do you suppose is down here?"

"What do you mean?" asked the big bearded man, voice sounding like he couldn't decide how furious to be. "This is Pulse! It's full of monsters! And demons! And barbarians waiting to kill us!"

"And now we're here, too!" The girl spread her arms, pacing in a slow circle. "We've got a lot of guns. So if the monsters come, _bang_!" She made a gun with her fingers, aiming off at one of the crystal waves. Then she spun around to face the big guy. "We should look around! Gotta see what's out there!"

"There's nothing out there but death!" shouted a voice from the crowd.

"No, she's right!" Serah's legs had carried her forward before she even quite knew what she was doing. "We should have died in that fall, but we didn't. Maybe we've been given a second chance. Maybe we can make it."

"Yeah!" declared Snow, striding forward to stand beside her. "We've gotta stay positive. We're alive. We've made it this far." He motioned off into the distance. For the first time, Serah looked beyond the waves of sculpted crystal, seeing rugged, rocky land and the green bluffs in the distance beyond them, then that strange, hazy line where the world seemed to end. "And, hey — as hells go, this one doesn't look too bad."

Serah could hear air blowing overhead, and some animal crying out in the distance, but for once the crowd was silent. After a moment, the soldiers' leader lowered his weapon and motioned to his troops, who did the same. "We need to secure the area, find any survivors and establish a perimeter. The rest of you, keep close and don't wander off alone."

"Hold on a minute," said Snow, approaching him. "Just because we're on the same side now doesn't mean we're taking orders from you."

"PSICOM personnel are trained to handle extraordinary circumstances," the soldier replied. "Giving weapons to nervous and unqualified civilians can lead to chaos."

A few more people from the crowd stepped forward to interject themselves in what became a more hushed argument, and Serah left them to it. Instead she sought out the redheaded girl, who had drifted back toward the edge of the crowd.

"Hey," she said, smiling. "Vanille, right?"

"Uh-huh!" Vanille was probably a year or two older than Serah, but she didn't act it. She was one of those people who seemed to have more energy than she knew what to do with, and even now she was shifting her weight from foot to foot as though she wanted to go bouncing off somewhere.

"That was really good, what you did," said Serah. "I don't think I could have got up in the middle of that."

"But you did, though. Just needed a little push!" Vanille grinned, lightly shoving at Serah's shoulder. Then she nodded at Snow. "So that's your boyfriend, huh?"

Serah smiled automatically. "Yeah. Actually, he's my fiancée, now. It almost doesn't seem real." Her eye caught one of the floating sparks of crystal dust as it danced around Vanille's face; she looked away, forcing herself to change the subject. "So, I guess you stayed around for the festival after all. Did you ever find your friend?"

When she looked up, Vanille was looking away, and Serah realized she probably could have picked a better topic to change the subject to. "I shouldn't have said anything. Vanille, I'm really sorry you got caught up in this."

"No!" Vanille's gaze snapped back onto her with a horrified look on her face. This was the part of her that Serah couldn't square with the bouncy persona the girl kept up most of the time. "Don't say sorry! None of this is your fault; it's all —" She stopped herself, spun away and ran off a few steps away from the crowd, boots tinkling as she kicked up the crystal dust.

Serah's hand absently traveled to her upper left arm, resting on the fabric over her l'Cie brand. She looked up at Cocoon, then back down at all the people who would never see their homes again because she had gotten curious.

She hadn't noticed it before, but off in the distance, beyond Vanille, the ground dipped away into a sort of canyon. Jutting out of the side at nearly a forty-five degree angle was the towering form of the Pulse Vestige that had loomed over Bodhum all her life, its bottom half now encased in a swirl of crystal sculpted like a giant wave.

It was a strange place, she thought, where that alien artifact was the most familiar part of it. But for better or worse, this was her world now.


End file.
